MTG - SECURITY

The Afghan War Diary (AWD for short) consists of messages from several important US military communications systems. The messaging systems have changed over time; as such reporting standards and message format have changed as well. This reading guide tries to provide some helpful hints on interpretation and understanding of the messages contained in the AWD.

Most of the messages follow a pre-set structure that is designed to make automated processing of the contents easier. It is best to think of the messages in the terms of an overall collective logbook of the Afghan war. The AWD contains the relevant events, occurrences and intelligence experiences of the military, shared among many recipients. The basic idea is that all the messages taken together should provide a full picture of a days important events, intelligence, warnings, and other statistics. Each unit, outpost, convoy, or other military action generates report about relevant daily events. The range of topics is rather wide: Improvised Explosives Devices encountered, offensive operations, taking enemy fire, engagement with possible hostile forces, talking with village elders, numbers of wounded, dead, and detained, kidnappings, broader intelligence information and explicit threat warnings from intercepted radio communications, local informers or the afghan police. It also includes day to day complaints about lack of equipment and supplies.

The description of events in the messages is often rather short and terse. To grasp the reporting style, it is helpful to understand the conditions under which the messages are composed and sent. Often they come from field units who have been under fire or under other stressful conditions all day and see the report-writing as nasty paperwork, that needs to be completed with little apparent benefit to expect. So the reporting is kept to the necessary minimum, with as little type-work as possible. The field units also need to expect questions from higher up or disciplinary measures for events recorded in the messages, so they will tend to gloss over violations of rules of engagement and other problematic behavior; the reports are often detailed when discussing actions or interactions by enemy forces. Once it is in the AWD messages, it is officially part of the record - it is subject to analysis and scrutiny. The truthfulness and completeness especially of descriptions of events must always be carefully considered. Circumstances that completely change the meaning of an reported event may have been omitted.

The reports need to answer the critical questions: Who, When, Where, What, With whom, by what Means and Why. The AWD messages are not addressed to individuals but to groups of recipients that are fulfilling certain functions, such as duty officers in a certain region. The systems where the messages originate perform distribution based on criteria like region, classification level and other information. The goal of distribution is to provide those with access and the need to know, all of the information that relevant to their duties. In practice, this seems to be working imperfectly. The messages contain geo-location information in the forms of latitude-longitude, military grid coordinates and region.

The messages contain a large number of abbreviations that are essential to understanding its contents. When browsing through the messages, underlined abbreviations pop up an little explanation, when the mouse is hovering over it. The meanings and use of some shorthands have changed over time, others are sometimes ambiguous or have several meanings that are used depending on context, region or reporting unit. If you discover the meaning of a so far unresolved acronym or abbreviations, or if you have corrections, please submit them to wl-editors@sunshinepress.org.

Messages may contain date and time information. Dates are mostly presented in either US numeric form (Year-Month-Day, e.g. 2009-09-04) or various Euro-style shorthands (Day-Month-Year, e.g. 2 Jan 04 or 02-Jan-04 or 2jan04 etc.).

Other times are noted without any time zone identifier at all. The Afghanistan time zone is AFT (UTC + 4:30), which may complicate things further if you are looking up messages based on local time.

Finding messages relating to known events may be complicated by date and time zone shifting; if the event is in the night or early morning, it may cause a report to appear to be be misfiled. It is advisable to always look through messages before and on the proceeding day for any event.

The message starts with a unique ReportKey; it may be used to find messages and also to reference them.

The next field is DateOccurred; this provides the date and time of the event or message. See Time and Date formats for details on the used formats.

Type contains typically a broad classification of the type of event, like Friendly Action, Enemy Action, Non-Combat Event. It can be used to filter for messages of a certain type.

Category further describes what kind of event the message is about. There are a lot of categories, from propaganda, weapons cache finds to various types of combat activities.

TrackingNumber Is an internal tracking number.

Title contains the title of the message.

Summary is the actual description of the event. Usually it contains the bulk of the message content.

Region contains the broader region of the event.

AttackOn contains the information who was attacked during an event.

ComplexAttack is a flag that signifies that an attack was a larger operation that required more planning, coordination and preparation. This is used as a quick filter criterion to detect events that were out of the ordinary in terms of enemy capabilities.

ReportingUnit, UnitName, TypeOfUnit contains the information on the military unit that authored the report.

Wounded and death are listed as numeric values, sorted by affiliation. WIA is the abbreviation for Wounded In Action. KIA is the abbreviation for Killed In Action. The numbers are recorded in the fields FriendlyWIA, FriendlyKIA, HostNationWIA, HostNationKIA, CivilianWIA, CivilianKIA, EnemyWIA, EnemyKIA

Captured enemies are numbered in the field EnemyDetained.

The location of events are recorded in the fields MGRS (Military Grid Reference System), Latitude, Longitude.

The next group of fields contains information on the overall military unit, like ISAF Headquarter, that a message originated from or was updated by. Updates frequently occur when an analysis group, like one that investigated an incident or looked into the makeup of an Improvised Explosive Device added its results to a message.

OriginatorGroup, UpdatedByGroup

CCIR Commander's Critical Information Requirements

If an activity that is reported is deemed "significant", this is noted in the field Sigact. Significant activities are analyzed and evaluated by a special group in the command structure.

Affiliation describes if the event was of friendly or enemy nature.

DColor controls the display color of the message in the messaging system and map views. Messages relating to enemy activity have the color Red, those relating to friendly activity are colored Blue.

Classification contains the classification level of the message, e.g. Secret

Meeting with GEN Sapand, Paktika Province Deputy Chief of Police:
PRT Meeting Objectives/Goals
1) Discuss how to increase our cooperation and develop the ANP.
2) Get to know GEN Sapan better and be able to better assess hos potential and capabilities
Discussion Items: Discussed incoming supplies from Gardez. Expecting 3 jingle trucks with winter supplies (recently sent back a delivery of summer weight uniforms) and GEN Fatah, regional ANP commander, said he is sending down 7 trucks for the province. Next week the ANP will have a regional meeting to discuss human rights. PRT discussed on the importance of human rights in and of itself and how it plays a part in limiting corruption. GEN Sapand discussed a recent shipment of bedding supplies that was missing items and his frustration with the general corruption of the police, at all levels. GEN S explained that from a regional security meeting the ANP agreed not to take individual personal weapons and stated that they have been complying and that the Governor is on board with the idea. Also discussed that the ANP is conducting training on proper home searching procedures, with a team in Sharana and a team that goes out to the districts to train. They also address proper wear of the uniform and individual discipline. PRT discussed the importance of the ANP conducting proper search operations and how the ANP should conduct all searches, the ANA should not be searching homes. GEN S discussed other attempts he is making at improving personal accountability in Sharan. PRT introduced the idea of MPs serving as trainers / OCs for the ANP in Mota Khan, Yousefkhel, Yayahkhel and Khayr Kot. Introduced the MP PSG to GEN S and explained his role, explained the intent for the PRT and JPCC and for the PRT Commander and GEN S, working together at several levels to train, develop and assess the ANP. GEN S supports the idea and was happy with the support.
GEN S addressed several areas of concern he has for ANP: wants to start confiscatinng all motorcycles that do not have proper registration; increase ANP checkpoints; wants to route all jingle trucks through manned CPs IOT properly inspect them and to limit illegal activity going through Sharan.
Admitted that ANP personnel records are incorrect, reporting 700, probably closer to 3 - 400. PRT explained how this huge discrpency adversly affects the police and their ability to lobby for more men and equipment. GEN S reiterated his concern and desire to gain positive accountability. he said he wants to conduct a census of personnel. PRT discussed the importance of developing quality, not just quantity in the police force. Communications. GEN S discussed his appreciation for PRT assistance in fielding comms gear and explained his desire to improve comms further. PRT explained JPCC Codan fiedling plan and that we should be full up on commo in every district by EOM FEB. GEN S spoke about recent discussions he has had with the governor about getting funding to promote the ANP over the radio and through more meetings and interface with the tribes and other local leaders in the province. GEN S also says he spoke with the Govenror about the positive affect of recognition, certificates, coins, etc. on personnel. He also suggested further recognition by the PRT or CF would positivly impact personnel. Reviewed upcoming meetings timeline. Agreed to a weekly ANP staff meeting being conducted Saturday mornings, attended by the PRTCDR and other members as appropriate, DynCorps mentors and staff. Following this meeting will be a one-on-one between GEN S and PRTCDR. PRTCDR gave GEN S three things to think about prior to next week&amp;amp;apos;s meeting: 1) getting GEN Fatah to Sharan for a visit; 2) Phase III Rank Reform and how to man the four unofficial districts in Sharan or
what other options may be, and; 3) coordination of ANP and ANA search operations. Following the group meeting, PRTCDR and GEN Sapand had a brief one-on-one. PRTCDR explained that these next few weeks were an evaluation of GEN S and his ability to properly lead the provincial police. That GEN Baqi was not performing and may be relieved and that GEN S was being assessed to take his place.
Problem Mitigation Before Next Meeting: Further develop the ANP - PRT training and coordinnation plan
PRT Assessment: Probably the best and most meaningful meeting between the ANP and the PRT. GEN S seems to be very willing and excited to work with the PRT and shows genuine appreciation for input and gives consideration to the the PRT&amp;amp;apos;s ideas. If the mentorship program is properly executed this could be a great opportunity to develop the ANP leadership and ANP in the greater Sharan area. GEN S is clearly intelligent and professional and demonstrates a genuine desire to improve the police. As GEN Baqi looks like more and more of a failure, GEN Sapand is looking like a potential replacement who may be able to positivly impact the province and improve the police.